


Katon

by OrangePress



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:53:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22279714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangePress/pseuds/OrangePress
Summary: Probably not going to be continued.There's a town in a really hot summer and a time loop. Tadah.
Kudos: 1





	Katon

The summer days were not pleasantly full of flowers blooming and waterparks; they were full of lifeless days and full of heat that melted cars and lit the crops on fire and left us in a torrid reverie dreaming of return to the lone brick school building with the shade and stream full of nice pleasantly chilled water. We had little time to daydream of frigid days nor of rest when all took turns watering and dowsing and standing guard to make certain the rich ample golden miles of grain stayed safe for harvesting in the fall as the leaves turned the colors of fire.

All of us envied the Mason’s children whose parents grew the most brilliant trees that produced fruit from far off exotic lands. They were often seen in bengaline dresses of shades I had never even heard of before. Sometimes, when we weren’t being jealous and had a little free time we would follow the Mason girls and taunt them petty threats and whistles just to see them move and the dresses sway.

We were spellbound when they left by the way the fabric seems to shine with majestic beauty and l will not deny that it was our favorite pastime to bother them at all hours when they were alone to get a rise and see the pretty dresses. There was five daughters who were constantly beleaguered by our wolf calls and whistles. The dresses drove us crazy with the way they seemed to hug and poof and when they walked they made everyone take a look or two. They were full of the richest blues and deepest greens and reds that seemed to outmatch the fires. When the oldest daughter, who was by some stroke of luck or fate my age, had the impudicity to wear a white one that seemed to shimmer with every step she took; you can bet that every bit of free time was spent following her with the roughed up sweating and exhausted girls standing as look outs for the adults.

The summer never seemed to end even with its deleterious heat and days that seemed far too long even with our pleasant idlolant activities. We spent countless days skipping work and enjoying little sapid treats filled days. When the Barts field full of semi-green wheats (The Barts had planted later than most due to their brief trip that had turned to weeks long stay at their grandparents house for the grandparents decaying health.) caught on fire, everyone was running back and forth with water and then I saw the youngest Mason’s girl who was twelve stumble and trip and fall down into the roaring flames that were barely being held off as we started a fire breaker in the Chapmans field. No one else noticed so caught were they in the fire and smoke that was making the heat even worse. I ran down the hill and found the youngest Mason’s girl laying at the bottom coughing and laying flat on the ground.

Perhaps the wind shifted or the break succeeded which caused the fire to loom over head filling the sky as far as I could see with smoke and fire. I could distantly hear a faint voice yelling my name. I grabbed the hand of the Mason’s girl and started running as fast as I could. Tears filled my eyes as smoke brushed against them and fire licked at my heels before consuming me. I could hear screams as I struggled forward gritting dirt and pebbles into my knees and hands. My ears rang and I felt tired. So so tired.

I felt someone pulling me out. My dad was talking to me yelling something that I couldn’t hear. I saw the Mason’s girl laying on the ground surrounded by fire. I shoved my dad and ran.

I don’t remember what happened next. All I remember was waking to the unbearable heat of my room that caused it’s ochre wallpaper to peel and crumble leaving behind bricks and rough cut lumber full of knags and knots that had long ago lost it’s colors to age and dust.

The bed creaked with old age as it resettled from me sitting up fast. The pretty quilt made of snippets of colorful clothing that had been worn out through play and work lay neatly but amuterly folded and tossed under the bed by a careless exhausted teenager. Drawing torn out of lined notebooks and rapidly yellowing from heat lined the walls full of drawings of flowers being held at various angles and birds in movement, flying across an open plains and dancing between cherry blossoms. The window was parted to let as much of the mildly cold drifting breeze coming down from Mount Bellway through as possible without inviting the nightlife to reduce the moilsome heat and lined with ibis covered curtains to keep the sun out as much as possible. I heard an ear wrenching scream followed by several more.

Then there was one downstairs from me. I slid it out of the bare bed and landed on the floorboards. I grabbed my nightshirt before racing towards the giant aching sobs. My dad was sitting up in his bare bed crying. My dad doesn’t cry like this often. These great gulping breaths as if there wasn’t enough air and tears poured in pools larger than pearls.

My father cried when he was sorting through my moms things after we turned off the life support. Mother had been sick for years and then had been in a coma for one. We couldn’t afford it-her anymore. He had found the peau-de-soie wedding dress that she had worn.

I remember being a kid and loving the perlaceous color. It was when I had been in an after school meeting and the teacher told me that in the poems unit to describe my family and I was using made up words and she was fussing at my dad for raising me to lie and she told him that this is what happens when there wasn’t a mother. I remember clenching my fists during that meeting and I remember thinking oh this is what rage feels like. I had gotten up and yelled at her that her she was a worricrow and to stop being bullying my dad just because he was malacissation. I can remember decisively choosing to use rare words when I yelled at her telling how her skin couldn’t be used for a heliograph and she was a perliginous. My father placed his hand on my shoulder and started reading the poem out loud,

“I know so many words but oh so little

And that’s what families for

Even with the jactation and teasing

Family is a harmony

Sometimes it’s the dissonance

That helps the music come forth

And sometimes this beautiful

Transcendent faburden is family

Now with my family though

My mother joined in a symphony

Of xanthophyll so I can see

The beauty and join in the song

Of life

Now with my family though

My dad is overlooked and forgotten

Like lapillus from a volcano

Just there

Now with my family though

That’s enough for me and I hope

That the words I speak come

So so true

Because that’s enough for me”

When we left the tiny school house with its brick walls and it’s angry words. My father sat down and cried.

This is one of those moments where my father sobbed. He grabbed me and pulled me into a tight hug. I could hear him muttering, ‘You were dead. You were dead.’ Over and over again.

When I was younger and full of bright eyes and puppy dog charm, I loved tigers that seem to ripple muscles flexing and coat shining as it passed silently through the dark jungle. A word I learned was tigrine. Anything to due with tigers.

My dad with his rolled up sleeves that showed his arms and when he flexed his veins and with eyes that were a dark brown seemed to me at the time tigrine. Quiet, reserved, and full of life that was being loved even if it didn't seem that way sometimes.

Like a tiger in a zoo that should be bored with the same scenery over and over again and no thrill to hunt but a rock to sun on, my dad lived within the town that could've, should have seemed stifling, he was at ease and at home and it was a quiet place full of heat and screams instead of a gentle peaceful place and I didnt know what to do.

So I didn’t and when the morning came and we ventured out into the scorching sun to see people wandering around looking nowhere and everywhere and appearing lost and hopeless did we learn that the days of this stupidly hot summer repeated time and time again.


End file.
